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In Trenton, Issuing IDs for Illegal Immigrants

An undocumented immigrant filling out an application for an identification card in Trenton.Credit
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

TRENTON, N.J. — Since moving to this city from her native Guatemala a decade ago, Herlinda, an illegal immigrant, has supported her family with restaurant work, but has had no way of proving that she lives here. Without government-issued photo identification, like a driver’s license or a passport, she said, she could not get treatment at most medical clinics, borrow a book from the library, pick up a package from a mail center or cash a check.

But this month she discovered a solution: a community identification card issued by a coalition of civic groups and endorsed by Trenton and Mercer County officials.

“When you don’t have a proper ID, they can humiliate you,” said Herlinda, 43, as she waited in the offices of a church where the cards were being issued. “I feel I belong in Trenton.”

As a new law in Arizona makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and spurs similar proposals in other states, Trenton is one of a small but growing number of municipalities that have moved in the opposite direction — making sure that illegal immigrants have documents to make their lives easier.

At least six city governments, including San Francisco and New Haven, now endorse or issue photo identification cards to residents. The latest is Princeton, N.J., where advocates for immigrants, with the consent of both the borough and the township, will begin issuing cards on May 22; other New Jersey communities have also expressed interest. Oakland, Calif., has approved a program but has not yet started issuing cards.

In one sense, these liberal cities and Arizona’s conservative lawmakers are working toward the same thing, said Maria Juega, treasurer of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy group that spearheaded the ID programs in Trenton and Princeton. Both camps, she said, are trying to fill the void created by Congress’s failure to fix a flawed immigration system.

“These are reactions,” Ms. Juega said. “We’ve had these gaping holes that everybody’s been talking about for two decades and done nothing about. Everybody’s scrambling.”

Calls for a nationally mandated identification card have been made for decades, particularly after 9/11, but they received a push late last month when a group of Democratic senators unveiled a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform. The plan includes a proposal to require all workers, including citizens, to show potential employers a card with biometric data, like fingerprints — a measure meant to prevent illegal immigrants from working.

The local identity cards do not grant legal residency or the right to work. They are intended to fold illegal immigrants into the fabric of the community by giving them entree to services and places that require some sort of recognized identification. In Trenton, immigrants can use their cards to access libraries, medical centers and doctors’ offices; seek help from charitable organizations and private social service agencies; and use the city’s public recreation centers and pools.

In addition, law enforcement officials say, the cards give illegal immigrants who fear detection and deportation more confidence about reporting crimes, and allow officials to help immigrants who are crime victims.

“I believe that people who are here in America must be safe and must be healthy,” said Eve Sanchez Silver, the community and Latino liaison for Asbury Park, N.J., where a city-endorsed identity card program for illegal immigrants began in 2008. “If they’re not safe, we’re not going to be safe. If they’re not going to be healthy, we’re not going to be healthy.”

While the programs in Trenton, Princeton and Asbury Park are endorsed by local law enforcement officials but administered by community organizations, New Haven and San Francisco themselves issue identity cards. The cards allow access to even more services, including opening bank accounts. This allows immigrants to deposit their pay checks, rather than carrying large amounts of cash that make them prey for thieves.

To keep the cards from becoming “scarlet letters” that mark illegal immigrants, they are offered to all residents, though they are mainly used by immigrants and the homeless.

Photo

Credit
Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

A few states, including New Mexico and Washington, allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, but the number has fallen as more states require proof of lawful presence in the country.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes illegal immigrants and proposals to give them legal status, described the local ID card programs as “attempts by the leadership of those communities to thwart enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.”

He added, “It encourages people to stay in those communities, when in fact the policies ought to be discouraging those people.”

But Ms. Juega said she and her fellow advocates in Trenton were motivated by a desire to “allow this population that is increasingly marginalized to have some semblance of a normal life.”

About 23 percent of Trenton’s 83,000 residents are immigrants, mostly Latinos, according to the 2008 American Community Survey. Many do not have legal immigration documents, advocates say.

Trenton’s ID program, which began in May 2009, met with minimal resistance among city officials, said Detective Bob Russo of the Office of Community Affairs in the Trenton Police Department, who has been a major proponent. “I’ve had a few colleagues who were against it,” he said. “But we stressed that you’re not giving this person any pass or anything like that, you’re just accepting that person as a member of the community.” City and police officials are under orders not to ask residents about their immigration status, unless it is in connection with a felony.

Still, only about 1,300 people in Trenton have stepped forward to get the cards. Some immigrants have been wary, despite promises that the information they provided would remain confidential.

Two days after New Haven lawmakers approved the nation’s first plan to offer cards in 2007, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a series of arrests in the area that sent 32 immigrants to detention centers around New England — a move that the mayor, John DeStefano Jr., described as retaliation. By the time city officials issued the first IDs, called Elm City Resident Cards, many residents were afraid to come forward.

Some other communities waited to see if there were legal challenges to the New Haven program, but none surfaced. Opponents of the program filed an open records request seeking the participants’ names and addresses. The city’s refusal was upheld by the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, said Michael J. Wishnie, a Yale law professor who helped develop the program and was retained by the city to help defend it in the event of lawsuits.

Like most community identification cards, the cards in Trenton have no currency outside the city. Detective Russo said that some police departments in neighboring communities had confiscated them, thinking they were fake.

Yet organizers say their program has been a success, drawing interest from other municipalities and praise from charitable agencies around the city. The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, director of the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton, which runs a food pantry, said a growing number of clients were using the cards to receive services.

Mario, 26, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, said he used the card to collect his paychecks at the commercial cleaning company where he works, and to enter the guarded buildings he cleans. Last week, he accompanied his friend Augustin, 19, to St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church in Trenton, where advocates issue the documents one evening each week. Augustin, a baby-faced immigrant from Mexico, said finding an employer prepared to hire him had not been a problem — the trouble was proving he was not under age.

As Augustin registered for a card, Mario revealed that his had been useful in some unexpected ways.

Early one recent morning as he was driving to work, he was pulled over by a Trenton police officer for driving with a broken tail light. The officer, he said, asked for his insurance card and registration as well as his driver’s license. While Mario had the car documents, he had no license; instead, he offered his local identity card.

The police officer, Mario said, let him go with a warning about the tail light. There was no mention of the lack of a driver’s license, a punishable offense.

Mario, an observant Catholic, smiled as he recalled his stroke of good fortune. “La obra de Dios,” he said. “The work of God.”

Correction: May 18, 2010

An article on Monday about cities that have issued identification cards to illegal immigrants misstated the nature of a challenge to New Haven’s program. Opponents filed a state open records request for the names and addresses of all ID card applicants or recipients; they did not file a lawsuit. And because of an editing error, the article also misidentified the authority that upheld the city’s decision not to release the names; it was the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, not the state government.

A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2010, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: In Trenton, Issuing IDs for Illegal Immigrants. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe